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Global habitat loss still rampant across much of the Earth

“As 196 signatory nations of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) meet this week in Cancun, Mexico, to discuss their progress towards averting the current biodiversity crisis, researchers from a range of universities and NGOs report in the international journal Conservation Letters that habitat destruction still far outstrips habitat protected across many parts of the planet.

The researchers assessed rates of habitat conversion versus protection at a 1 km resolution across the worlds 825 terrestrial ecoregions (areas that contain unique communities of plant and animal) since the CBD was first ratified in 1992. They showed that while there have been considerable gains in global efforts to increase the size of protected area estate, alarming levels of habitat loss still persist.

They discovered that over half the planet can be classified as completely converted to human-dominated land use, with 4.5 million square kilometers (an area two thirds the size of Australia) converted in the past two decades alone.”